5 ways HomePod mini helps in your home office
Your office assistant
Looking for an excuse to charge Apple’s HomePod mini to your office expense accounts? Here are several ways it will help you get things done.
Do this first
Some of these tips require that you enable Personal Requests on your HomePod Mini. This is simple to do, but boring to read about, so follow these instructions Apple provides.
Done that? OK, here are a few useful things your HomePod mini can help you do.
Call wrangling
To make a call with your HomePod, just say “Hey Siri, call [name of contact from your book]”, or simply try “Hey Siri call [number”. Your HomePod will use your iPhone and its mobile network using your number. You can also transfer calls you are engaged in to your HomePod using one of the tips in this extensive iPhone call handling guide.
Send a message
HomePod will read you your messages as they come in if you want. But I think that’s annoying. I do, however, ike it that you can use Siri and your HomePod to “HJey Siri send a message to [contact name]”.
Schedule appointments
To set this up, open Settings>Calendar>Default Calendar on your iPhone and choose the calendar you want work-related appointments to be scheduled in. You only need to do this once.
Now, whenever you want to schedule an appointment, try one of these recipes (begin each one with the phrase, “Hey Siri”:
- Create a calendar event from [define time] on [state date] called [name event]
- Create an all-day calendare event for [date] called [name your event]
- Invite [name contact from your contact book] to [event name]
- Delete the event called [event name[
- Delete my [time of appointment] meeting today
- What’s on my calendar today.
- Change the time of [event time] to [say new time]
You can also ask Siri and your HomePod who just called you and ask it to hang up.
Make Notes and Reminders
Here’s the recipes you need:
- Hey Siri, what are my reminders?
- Hey Siri, remind me at (state time) to [state task]
- Hey Siri, take a note [state your note].
- Hey Siri, read my latest Note.
And set a timer
Need to focus? Need to make a call? Ask Siri to set an alarm for that time.
Now you have a few arguments to turn a HomePod mini purchase into a relatively justifiable business expense.
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